The Challenge:
I lately answered a challenge regarding an alleged contradiction between Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies of Jesus.
In response, my Muslim challenger wrote:
“GOD IS not the author of confusion and these gospels are confusing. I would gladly post more contradictions for you if you would like to tackle them I would be interested in reading your reply to them”
I responded:
I invite you to provide more alleged contradictions, if provided one at a time.
You ask:
There is no historical evidence to anything you mentioned above. Just a book that you have written? Where is this book?
My book, The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (1992) was published by Thomas Nelson Publishers, the world’s largest Bible publisher. It is still available in its digital or software format. The printed editions are only available second-hand, at quite high prices, as from Amazon.
I worked on expanding the New Treasury from 2010 to 2016. The much expanded version is only available in software format for use with the free e-sword Bible software. It is available as a “Premium Module” for about $30. It is titled The Ultimate Cross Reference Treasury. It is available from e-studysource.com under commentaries.
As for there being “historical evidence” for anything I mentioned above, think about it for just a bit.
We could not be talking about Jesus Christ if He had never existed, never entered human history.
If what we know of Him today was witnessed by people at the time who saw these events take place, then certainly these events are genuine history.
The events were of such a nature that people who were there at the time could see and hear what was going on and could easily judge whether such things were really happening.
The events recorded in the four Gospel records regarding the life of our Lord Jesus Christ were events that took place in public. They were not “done in a corner,” that is, were not done in secret.
Some events in the life of Christ, such as the Last Supper, resulted in actions or commemorative activities that have been practiced repeatedly in an unbroken series ever since.
Christ commanded the rite or sacrament of water baptism as well as the aforementioned rite or sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, which have been consistently practiced from that time to the present day.
If our Lord Jesus Christ did not institute such practices at the time the Gospel accounts record that he did, then the practices must have been instituted a good while afterward when the original witnesses to these events were no longer alive to confirm or deny these institutions and their historical basis.
But to institute such unheard of practices at a later time based on alleged events which never happened would be impossible because the people upon which such practices were being foisted would know that there never were such practices before in their experience or the experience of their immediate forefathers. Any claims to the authenticity of such institutions would be rejected by all because they were utterly unheard of at or before their time. This makes it impossible to foist such practices upon future supposedly more gullible generations.
Therefore, the continued practice of these institutions or sacraments in an historically unbroken series in the Christian church demonstrates the truth and historicity of the New Testament record.
The same principles hold true for the Old Testament Scriptures. They provide the historical record of the Passover and the Exodus, the giving of the Law, the institution of circumcision, and the civil institutions of the nation of Israel.
The institution of the Passover has been practiced by the Jewish people in an unbroken series year by year since its institution under the leadership of Moses.
The Passover and other continuing Jewish institutions serve to absolutely verify the historicity of the Old Testament just as memorial institutions practiced from the time of the events that brought them about by the command of our Lord Jesus Christ establish the historicity of the New Testament.